Category — real estate

I am off to San Diego with my family. I am heading there for a business trip and I decided that San Diego is too nice of a place to go without them. I was supposed to leave on Friday, by the Noreaster that stopped by cancelled all of the flights out of JFK airport. I’ll only get to spend 1 day with them and the rest of the time, I’ll be at a conference and the wife and kids will be off to Sea World and the Zoo. I’ll at least get to go with them to the tide pools and beach tomorrow (Sunday). Maybe I’ll even get a swim in at La Jolla Cove.

The storm did have a bit of a silver lining. My real estate class ended this week and the final exam for it was on Friday. Since I was no longer flying out, I was able to take the exam on the original time scheduled, instead of having to sweat it that day after I come back from San Diego. The test was quick and easy and I was home before 7pm. This gave me just enough time to take my kids to Prospect Park to do some nighttime sledding. We were the only ones out and we had fun going down the unmarked fresh snow. I also managed to get in a quick swim and run earlier in the day.

Today I extended my workout streak to 16 days. I did an easy 4 miler on my treadmill, in between packing for the trip. Yeah, I should have packed yesterday, but since my flight was cancelled I spent the time studying. So today was just a quick 4 miles and then it was off to one of my most dreaded tasks – packing for a trip. I hate it. I always worry about forgetting or not packing something I may want. It’s enough that it almost makes me not want to go anywhere.

I still haven’t done a long run in quite some time. To make up for this and to get ready for the Boston Marathon, I signed up to the Kurt Steiner 50K. I figure I will get all of my long runs in at one shot. Kind of like cramming for an exam. I am doing the race with Larry, so I really have no worries about finishing it. I know he will help me pace properly to insure success. Also, when I return from San Diego, I have the CityTri Spring Duathlon in Prospect Park. Just a short little race to get some of the cobwebs out of my body.

That’s all for now. The airplane is getting ready to land.

Lately, I seemed to have gotten my training routine back together and have successfully woken up early enough to get in morning workouts. I’ve been getting up early enough so that after they are finished, I can still wake my family up and sit down to breakfast with them. With everyone just waking up, it’s like the workouts never happened. What proof do I have of accomplishing them except for the data on my Polar Heart Rate Monitor. This is the second time I’ve felt like that this week. Maybe I am just dreaming I am working out.

Anyway, so I had a nice run yesterday and I was planning on a swim in the evening and then heading home for a relaxing evening with my family. That’s when my schedule for the next 6 weeks became suddenly complicated. As one of my job requirements I am to take the Real Estate Salesperson licensing course and exam. A coworker of mine told me that a course has just began and that she was going this evening. This was at 4pm in the afternoon and then by 6pm I found myself sitting in an extremely boring 3 hour real estate course. I’ll be doing this for three nights per week (T,W,Th) for four more weeks over the next 5 weeks.

I was kind of freaking out that I somehow committed myself to this course of action with so little time to contemplate it. Being in this course was the last thing I expected to happen when I woke up this morning. While not nearly as extreme it was like I was suddenly taken from home and sent to the war in Iraq. Yes, I should probably be ashamed of myself for comparing going to a real estate course to going to Iraq, but it will serve for the purposes of letting you know how suddenly out of sorts I felt.

The course is deadly boring. Three hours of pure torture. New York State requires that every student must spend 45 hours in class. Actually 40.5 as you are allowed to miss up to 4.5 hours. Since I missed the first day I only have a 1.5 hour cushion. The material that is covered in 3 hours could easily have been covered in about an hour. The instructor fills the remainder of the time with stupid jokes, comments about student’s clothes and stories of him golfing and playing the guitar. We spent at least 15 minutes on one student’s shoes and a shopping mall where the student could have purchased them for half of what he paid. I spent most of the time playing online poker on my computer (thank goodness for WiFi Internet access) and chatting with friends over IM.

Fortunately, the instructor decided to let us out of class about 30 minutes early. That was until he had the bright idea of offering to the class the opportunity to watch a video of him playing a guitar solo of Freebird on stage with a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band on my computer. So instead of going home I had about 10 other students gathered around my computer watching a grainy video of him playing the guitar. I thought I would puke right then and there. Only 39 more hours.